The invention relates to a method and device for playing content, especially relates to a method and device for detecting the available bandwidth of a network the playing device connected to, downloading content of appropriate quality and playing them.
With the fast development of optical disk and OPTICAL DISK playback technology, more and more content are stored in the network server in order to be downloaded in the player during the playback process and then cooperate with the player in the playback.
The downloaded content can be applications, audio and subtitles. The application is written by JAVA language or other programming languages. The applications written by JAVA language are: advertisement, game, animation and executable applications for controlling the playback process of OPTICAL DISK, which are written by JAVA language.
It is widely used in many OPTICAL DISKs and the corresponding players to store the application, additional audio and subtitles in the network server, then download them to the player anytime for cooperating in the OPTICAL DISK playback, eg. Blue-Disc and corresponding player, eDVD (Enhanced DVD) and corresponding player.
At present, a dialog box offering options to the user usually can be seen in the screen when downloading content from network servers to cooperate in OPTICAL DISK playback. This dialog box requires the user to select a relevant bandwidth (or throughput) based on the current network connection type (dialing-up, ISDN, broadband connection, etc), then it sends the bandwidth option to the network server to request to download information, the quality (bit rate) of which is adaptive to the bandwidth, so as to use the information of appropriate quality to cooperate seamlessly the OPTICAL DISK playback. For example, if selecting the dial-up connection, then the available network connection bandwidth will be relatively small. At this time, the user may select to download audio information of quality that is adaptive to the current bandwidth to cooperate in the OPTICAL DISK playback. If the user is connecting to the broadband network, then the bandwidth of the network connection will be relatively large, thus the user can select to download the audio, animation or game of quality that is adaptive to the current bandwidth to cooperate in the OPTICAL DISK playback.
However, whether the dial-up or broadband connection is selected, both of the network connection bandwidths change dynamically. According to the current using connection type, the user selects a bandwidth to download the information of quality corresponding therewith. However the network connection bandwidth may vary, for example, because more (or less) devices or users connect to the network, the network connection bandwidth becomes more (or less), as a result, the selected quality is not adaptive to the network connection bandwidth, so it is hard to utilize fully the current network connection bandwidth or implement the seamless OPTICAL DISK playback.
Furthermore, the user should know a great deal of technology during the above selecting process, such as what is the maximum bandwidth in dial-up connection and broadband connection. Thus, the user may make an appropriate quality selection to implement seamless playback. However, in fact, not all users know the above technology. If not, he may select the wrong option.
For example, although the user may download the content with better quality to cooperate in the OPTICAL DISK playback according to the current actual bandwidth, because the selected bandwidth is less than the actual bandwidth, it results in that he downloads the content with worse quality to cooperate in the OPTICAL DISK playback. So, it will bring the user the worse playback affecting the user's interests for viewing the OPTICAL DISK information. On the other hand, if in terms of the current actual bandwidth, the user can only download the content of worse quality to cooperate in the OPTICAL DISK playback, but the selected bandwidth is greater than the actual one, the result is that he downloads content with better quality than adaptive to the current bandwidth to cooperate in the OPTICAL DISK playback, so it will result in that the downloaded content are delayed from the content read direct from the OPTICAL DISK easily, so it is hard to achieve the synchronous playback.
Therefore, an improved method and device for downloading content is needed to avoid the above drawbacks.